Help me improve my dragon well!

As i've said in a few posts I was out of the tea game for a few years and forgot a lot of things that I had not written down.

My current problem is I can't get my dragon well to taste like it did back in the day. Can anyone tell me what i'm doing wrong?

I brewed 3 grams of leaf in a 2 ounce pot at 170F for 1:35.

It had the dragon well taste, but also some unpleasant bitterness that totally ruined the cup. I was surprised to get bitterness because I went way shorter than I had read I was supposed to. Any advice?

2 ounces as in 60ml? You may have too much leaf in the pot. I usually use a 1 gram to 30ml ratio for Longjing and other Chinese greens. Try experimenting with one variable at a time, take notes, and you'll find the way that you like to brew it.

It could be the tea too, your Longjing is probably almost a year old at this point. Assuming you know it was harvested in 2013, that is.

Joel Byron wrote:2 ounces as in 60ml? You may have too much leaf in the pot. I usually use a 1 gram to 30ml ratio for Longjing and other Chinese greens. Try experimenting with one variable at a time, take notes, and you'll find the way that you like to brew it.

It could be the tea too, your Longjing is probably almost a year old at this point. Assuming you know it was harvested in 2013, that is.

+1 ... but I would also bring the temp down a bit which should reduce bitterness. I also think I usually try a minute for the first steep and adjust from there.

When I get unpleasant bitterness in a tea, I drop the infusion times until the bitterness is bearable or gone; if it's too dilute to enjoy at that point, then I drop the leaf quantity with the next infusions, and do the same thing--try with short infusions until I like it, or find it so dilute as to be not worth while. Sometimes it's the brewing, sometimes it's the tea.

No, the dragon well is fresh.. I just bought it. I dont know if its good dragon well.. I'm immunosupressed so my docs will only let me drink name brand stuff that comes from a package ie no independent tea farms in japan.. So i grabbed the rishi. I'm sure i'll still be able to get a good cup of tea out of it

Rishi might be the best brand you can buy in a supermarket, but the tea tins aren't dated. That's true of their website also. When I order from them online, in my case mainly jasmine tea, I email first to check on harvest dates.

trallis wrote:It had the dragon well taste, but also some unpleasant bitterness that totally ruined the cup. I was surprised to get bitterness because I went way shorter than I had read I was supposed to. Any advice?

In tea brewing, there are many attributes that you need to control. The basic one is control 3 basic attributes i.e. sweetness, astringency and bitterness. These 3 are the main components of flavor and they always race out of the brew and has to be controlled. There are method to control astringency, and if you want to control bitterness, the speed of pour and the infusion time is very critical. Try to increase the temperature a bit and pour the brew out faster. Tea leaves also also behave differently and you must practice and calibrate to understand the leaves that you are brewing.

trallis wrote:No, the dragon well is fresh.. I just bought it. I dont know if its good dragon well.. I'm immunosupressed so my docs will only let me drink name brand stuff that comes from a package ie no independent tea farms in japan.. So i grabbed the rishi. I'm sure i'll still be able to get a good cup of tea out of it

hmm...why not name brand teas from Japan? Japanese tea packaging is very good and Japan has strict food safety guidelines equivalent or better than those in the United States and Europe. Do ask your Doctor about it, it's probably worth bringing up

For this dragon well, like others have said I think the first thing to try is a bigger pot, that's a very high leaf:water ratio for Chinese greens.

edit - I did some browsing to see why tea could be an issue for immunosupressed patients and found (on PubMed) documented cases of B. Cereus infection from drinking tea. The patients were using commercially available, individually packaged tea bags.